Stress levels dropping

[silveradept]

Allow me, if you will, to drive a point home here. If you take your child to a library, there is a chance that they will be exposed to media that is, in your opinion, inappropriate. A sixteen-year old, reading about the history of manga, finds out that there is a section devoted to adult and 18+ material in it. Now, in this situation, there are several options available to a parent that finds out about this. One is to realize that these things do happen, and talk with one's child about the material within if there are any concerns. One can certainly alert the library to the existence of that material, and let the library, if it chooses, do something about marking the book or filing the book in a different place, However, it is bad form to invoke the governmental powers and have them order the censoring and removal of the book . The statements in that article are disturbing. The library does not need, nor does it desire, any sort of "screening process" that occurs outside library staff, and it certainly does not need anyone from outside the library staff determining what is and is not appropriate for the library collection! It is tantamount to saying that you don't trust your librarian, and even more so, as I have stated many times before, the library is a dangerous place. There is a good chance that someone will find, either intentionally or accidentally, material that conflicts with their current reality-view. If you want to censor one part of it, then you agree that if someone else decides to censor your worldview, that you'll be okay with it. If you're not okay with the prospect of you being censored, then don't advocate the censoring of someone else. What goes around, comes around.

In the "Slightly odd transitions" department, there's someone who's planning on hitting a tee shot off the International Space Station. Probably will be the longest drive on record. Besides, didn't the moonwalkers hit a few shots while they were there?

Today was also goodness day, and a good day out. I'm utterly finished with one of my classes now, and it was a nice day out, enough to forego the coat, and I had good conversation and bubble-blowing. It was a really good day today. Tomorrow will hopefully be an even better day.

Comments

[thalass.livejournal.com]

That... scares me. I fear that if the book hadn't been removed, there'd be people storming it and burning the place down.

Like what happened in Alexandria. heh.



Things like this make me feel that america is slipping towards a "dark age" kind of scenario. It's not a good thought. :(

[silveradept]

Well, this is an instance of local government interfering where they should. Libraries also get things like CIPA and USA PATRIOT dropped on their doorsteps to deal with.

A significant number of great harms happen in the library profession (and in education) in the name of "protecting the children", many of whom desire access to the very thing that their parents or society says they don't want or need.

I doubt things would have resorted to stroming the library. There would just be some enterprising person who checked the book out and never returned it, or simply took it off the shelves without checking it out at all. That's another of those abuses that happens in the name of protecting kids or enforcing someone's distorted view of what a library should and shouldn't carry.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I remember in school we used to have "banned book month" where the school library would showcase the books that had ever been banned from the library, and the list was pretty strange. Even Little House On The Prarie got banned at one point because of how Laura Ingalls Wilder decribed Native Americans.

I will never undestand censorship in the library, and how it's not a violation of the first amendment (first is freedom of speech, right?) when books get removed from the library.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

PS: what's CIPA?

[silveradept]

Well, a lot of challenges to books are "not age-appropriate" challenges, basically, "This thing is accessible to children and shouldn't be!". Others, like this particular challenge, invoke the obscenity standard, claiming that the work has no redeeming educational value, and as such, shouldn't be held in a library. (That challenge, in my opinion, fails in this work - there's clearly plenty of educational value in the rest of the book, even if you think that one section is obscene... and even that section is educational, in my opinion.)

As a public institution, the library is subject in many ways to the whims of the elected government, who often holds the purse strings. Censorship of books in the library doesn't actually violate any of the First Amendment guarantees (speech, assembly, press, redress, and religion). It does, however, in the opinion of the American Library Association, a lot of librarians, and several other library groups, do significant harm to one of the purposes of the library, which is to provide access to materials without bias or prejudice. The public library is a place where you can learn all sorts of dangerous, non-parent or non-government approved things. And that's how it's supposed to be.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

For what reason shouldn't books be accessable to children, though? I mean, you're talking to the girl who's reading level was so advanced, she was reading Gone With the Wind in 5th grade. In seventh grade, while all my freinds were doing book reports on a Sweet Valley High book, or a Babysitter's Club book, I was doing my book report on Flower's in the Attic (VC Andrew's). Of course, my teacher also knew that a SWH or BSC book only took me about an hour to read, but still. A LOT of adults were upset that I was reading those types of books. Even when I started reading "classic lit"-type books, like Cider House Rules, Jane Eyre, Pride & Predjudice in 8th grade. Someone else (not my mom, either) decided that those books were not appropriate for someone of my age, and I was no longer allowed to borrow them from the school library. Now, explain to me why those kinds of books are IN a middle school library if the students aren't supposed to read them? Oh, and I need to add that while it was not OK to read books that dealt with sex, rape, and abortion, it was ok for my male counterpart to be reading Stephen King books. Go fig.

The public library was my favourite place to be when I was younger. I used to check out piles and piles of books...I thikn the maximum was 20 at a time. The library was across the street from my house, so I'd load up my bike basket with books and squeeze them all into my backpack. *sigh* now, I'm lucky if I have time to finish one book a month.

[silveradept]

CIPA is the Children's Internet Protection Act. Its mandate is that any library that receives special rates for its internet access (the E-rate program) or assistance in buying technology under the Library Services and Technology Act must have "technology prevention measures" in place to protect children from obscene materials, child pr0n, and any other materials that might be considered harmful to children, on any computers that might be accessed by minors. The filter can be removed upon request of an adult user by someone authorized to do so (generally the librarian) for research or other lawful purposes.

CIPA happens to be the third try at such an act, as the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) and Child Online Protection Act (COPA) were struck down as unconstitutional. CIPA itself survived a court challenge, with a 6-3 decision in favor of its constitutionality by the Supreme Court.

Yeah, so what it does is that it requires any library that gets discounts on its Internet access (a good thing in strapped library budgets) to put some sort of blocking software on any computers that are affected. Since most people who have used blocking software know that it doesn't block all the things it should and tends to block a lot of legitimate sites. Blocking software will block sexual health sites, sites about LGBT lifestyles, and things like that - useful, vital information to teens who might be looking for research or for their own knowledge, and for one reason or another, can't do it at home - which serioiusly impairs the library's ability to provide unfettered and anonymous access. How many kids do you think will actually ask the librarian to remove the filter, one, and two, have the strength of will to say what the reason actually is for wanting it off?

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

*nods* even some corporate filters are like that. Where I work, we had to disable the filter because no one was able to get any work done. (Try doing a behavioral health survey on sex when you can't access the websites with the quesions to ask!)

I can understand wanting to block children from accessing pr0n, but really - I don't think anyone would try to search for it deliberately on a public computer, and there are even some websites when you mispell them that lead to porn.

And blocking sites about sexual health and sex issues is a bad idea, because you're exactly right. No teenager is going ot walk up to the librarian and say "I'm trying to find out about abortions" or "I want to look up a website about being gay". Or if they do, they're really brave. But most teenagers would, I think, go to the library to use the internet over being at home for the simple purpose that there isn't anyone looking over their shoulder, or looking at their browser history, like a parent might do.

>.< it makes me mad when I think about how much crap the government tries to keep from us "for our own good", when in the long-run, all it does it hurt people.

And just as an example of how stupid blocking software is: I have a photo on my site from my trip to NH labled "moosexing.jog". It's a photo of a moose crossing the road. I went to show it to someone at my old job one day and we got zinged with a warning that our web activitiy was being logged and sent on to the computing center and continuing to visit websites with innapropriate content could lead to us loosing our internet access.....because the word "sex" was technically in the url. BUT, we could go to a website of a local photographer (scottchurch.com i think), who takes mostly nude/partial nude photos with no problems.

[silveradept]

The school media specialists get extra headaches on top of what affects the public library, because they also have to deal with administration and with parents who might be taking a much bigger interest in their child not being exposed to anything even remotely controversial.

Mostly, though, people don't want some books to be available to children because it offends their sensibilities, and they assume or are determined to make sure that all other people share their exact worldview. This beceomes especially dangerous if the librarian is the one doing the judging.

As for the double-standard, well, there's a lot of that going on about what would be appropriate for girls, not just in books, but in sport, academics, and other places... most of it probably coming straight from the Victorian era, where ankle-showing is still scandalous.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

*coughs* () I'm already a scarlet woman! ;)

I guess I have definite liberal views about everything. I think that children should have access to whatever they want - I'm not saying shove something like Pr0n in their face or anything, but if they stumble upon it, let them come to you and ask the questions, and then hope that the parent/teacher/librarian has a better explination than "this is bad and wrong".

I'm kind of glad I don't have any children. Maybe by the time I'm ready to bring some into the world, society won't be quite so close-minded about things.

As for the girl comment - I agree. There's a LOT of doors that still get shur to girls. the AAUW is doing remarkable things with girls in science and math in the past few years, but it can't do anything to go back and change things for the girls of my generation or the generations before me. Even my own family, despite the majority of bank tellers now being female, gave me a lot of flac when I was working for a bank and thinking about it as a career. I got told that "boys are bankers, not girls"

When I was in HS, it was always the boys that got praised in math and science, girls not so much. I told you about doing poorly in pre-calc when I was a junior. I was flat out TOLD by the teacher to drop the class, because they couldn't give me any help.

My high school had two girls on the wrestling team, and it was so hard for them to have any oponents...no one wanted to wrestle a girl, for one, and for two..girls "aren't supposed" to wrestle. Today, I'm friends with several ladies who are amateur wrestlers, and I think they're better than a male wrestler anyday.

[silveradept]

There are adults who do deliberately search for pr0n from library computers. There are enough horror stories about kids who innocently click the back button to receive an eyeful of material from a user who was too lazy to close out his browser session. There's a good chance that a kid will be exposed accidentally to adult material at some point in their lives. In fact, it's almost a guarantee.

Precisely on the bit about why kids come to the library to look up sensitive topics - if their parents don't give off the impression that they're supportive, or have already indicated significant hostility to the idea, then the kid doesn't want the parent to look over their shoulder or leave any traces of their searches where a parent might find them.

And I know all about the stupidity of blocking software - it's a hobby, really, among students to figure out ways of getting around controls placed on them. Many of them are quite good at it. And the other parts that go around are the things that the software doesn't actually block. Plus, blocking software sites don't have to make their algorithms open to the public, so nobody but the company really knows how things are done there. Blocking software in general sucks.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

is there any type of "fight" against the blocking software that's going on?

I mean...can it be fought?

[silveradept]

Well, CIPA survived a constitutionality challenge, so we'll have wait for a different suit to try again.

As for filters themselves, I would guess that places like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Library Association are definitely against blocking software and want to challenge it everywhere it exists.

[silveradept]

Unfortunately, a lot of the time, the response will be "This is Bad and Wrong", even with some librarians (which is unfortunate) - the librarian has a case for "You're not old enough to view those materials, are you?" but they can still do better than saying "Pr0n, BAD!".

The boys/girls thing hasn't been much of an issue for me. (We hope. Unless there's some latent misogyny somewhere.) Could be that both of my sisters are bruisers and don't take shit from anybody. Could be that I've never really thought of myself as being better than the girls (also could be that I'm interested in a lot of hobbies that girls are "traditionally" better at, and so I'm used to seeing skilled women do their thing. And my advanced maths teacher was also the "Drill Sargeant" of the high school marching band.

So I never really got this opinion that girls "don't do" things, because I've seen more than enough of them doing lots of things they're not supposed to already in my life.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I thikn I do a lot of things I'm not supposed to do..most noticably, my computer geek-ery. Even when I was in HS and was BBSing, there was only a handful of girls who did it. IRC is the same. The fact that I can fix computers completely baffles most people.

[silveradept]

That it does. I do believe one of the Queen of Wands strips summed it up nicely, when Kestrel went to go get some more RAM for her computer and ended up manging one of the salespeople.

(Also, the caption to that potterpuffs... "Minerva McGonagall thinks...?")

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

...that's the icon. "Professor McGonagall thinks you're insane, really".

and *grin* I so love Queen of Wands.

Really, for all my adoration of Minerva, you'd think it'd be her over Ginny.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

People don't understand what libraries are anymore. They don't understand that they are not, and were never meant to be, "child-proofed." IT'S A GODDAMN LIBRARY. THERE ARE BOOKS IN THERE. LOTS OF THEM. DUH.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

I think the government needs to stay out of the libraries!

[silveradept]

Mm-hmm. Books are some of the most not-child-friendly things there are. And having a whole library full of them is just asking for someone to use them to learn things that parents wouldn't want anyone to know.